This annual event is the major fundraiser for our club, which supports both the WHS boys basketball teams and Woodinville select boys basketball teams in grades 4 – 8. This year’s event was our biggest ever — bringing over 80 teams and nearly 1,000 players plus their supporters to Woodinville.

While the tournament is run by the parents and players in the club, it could not have been accomplished without the support we received from the Northshore School District and businesses in the community. A huge thank you goes out to the school district for making the gyms available, the staffs at Woodinville High School, Bothell High School and Northshore Junior High for welcoming us onto their campuses, and to the Woodinville High School Drama Club for the partnership required to accommodate so many people on campus on Friday and Saturday nights for their play and our tournament.

We would also like to thank the following businesses in Woodinville who supported our tournament with sponsorships, discounted good and services and special offers for tournament attendees:

• The presenting sponsor of our tournament – Wilkins Performance

• Liberty Sign Shoppe

• FASTSigns

• Seattle Espresso

•Washington Pizza Company

• Subway

• Jimmy Johns

• Ezell’s Fried Chicken

• Chipotle

• Red Robin

• Roundtable Pizza

• Dairy Queen

• Woodinville Hometown Values Coupon Magazine

• Mazatlan

• Plaza Garcia

• Garlic Jim’s

• Gold’s Gym

• Massage Envy

• Restaurant Depot

• State Farm/Mike Rodgers

Brian Riseland, VP, Basketball Club of Woodinville

I would like to respond to last week’s letters on the subject of homeless people in our area. I’ve confronted only one woman outside Kingsgate Safeway in Kirkland who, though appearing homeless, admitted she had a room to occupy at night. I believe she spent the money she collected at a nearby tavern. Whatever the backstory of the homeless, however, my experience has been to adopt such a person, which I did in the University district when I attended graduate school. I spent 3 1/2 years on this project. If anyone can help such a person, it would be a great thing. There can be unspeakable hurdles, however, as I have experienced, whereby psychologically-deprived people who wish to reach out to a normal person, cannot even compose a grammatical sentence. These are people who should be helped by the professional community, but are not. The professionals, ensconced in their offices, don’t wish to know people without insurance. To help another person on a one to one basis, overcome these grave psychological problems is an extraordinary feat, and I am thinking how clueless we all feel when confronting a person whom we cannot raise up. We just don’t understand what makes a person fall below the poverty line and stay there, as if it is their life’s fate.